Saturday, July 5, 2008

I goofed. I know it isn't like anyone was waiting for an update on my mammoth yard project, but if this blog is supposed to be like my e-journal, then I missed a post that should have been made. To my defense, it was a month of job hunting and getting ready for teaching my class at JHU so I forgive myself this transgression. Just this once though, any more issues like this and I will thoroughly chastise myself. I promise.

So, as you could tell from the last post my yard project is complete. To prove it, take a look at these two pics. Yes, my grass is growing. Even though my yard has been inundated with flying pests (these really annoying little brown birds (wrens maybe?)) who have been eating all of the seed they can get to by digging through the hay, my watering efforts have come to fruition. Grass. Yeah!

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But, how did I get from my post on the rainy days of April to this finished point? Lots of hard work let me tell you. With some help from some great friends and their trucks, plus my poor abused minivan, we trucked in a few more tons (yes, tons) of composed mulch to fill out the yard and the walkway and planter were completed. So now there are flowers, little bitty grass seedlings, and plenty of annoying birds filling out our front yard.

Enjoy the pics:

Don't you love the cable line the trained professional cable installers left about a half inch under the ground when they installed it? Yup, almost sliced through that more than once. After all was said and done I dug a nice new trench for it so it should be much safer now than it used to be.

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I had a ton of fill to get rid of after I dug out the area for the walkway. I wanted to continue to build up the slope across from the front door but even after doing that I had a TON. Thank goodness we live next to a wooded area. It was easy to spread it out in there.

I mixed in a small deck project into the larger yard project. There was a problem with chipmunks digging tunnels under the brick patio out back so I decided to get rid of that and use the fill to level off the walkway. Once I got the fill out I covered the area with a simple deck.

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The walkway getting further...

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With the walkway going in it was time to continue working on the yard, getting rid of the bad soil, digging down into the clay. Backbreaking doesn't quite explain it accurately enough.

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Working on the deck, trying to get that knocked out so I could continue on the rest of the yard project.

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What a mess this place was. How Wifey could stand it, or any of the other "projects" this past year, is beyond me. I picked me a winner I did. I put in the rock walled garden seen in the picture below to hide the end of the drainage pipe. Pretty ingenious I thought. The last picture shows the start of the second round of dirt. I hate dirt. I never want to see that mulch pile again in my entire life. Until I come up with another project that is. :)

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Finishing up the deck.

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The finished deck, just in time for my birthday party. Not too shabby. Still have to treat and stain the surface but it is usable!

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There you have it, the whole project. With the grass growing pretty well and the fact that it is supposed to be pretty damp for the next week, we should be all done out there. YEAH!!!

Oh, and just for the sake of posting a cute picture or two, some recent pics from a concert at Downtown Silver Spring and from Port Discovery in Baltimore. Huge thanks go to DBCJ for letting us tag along with them to Port Discovery. Thanks for getting the mondo passes guys!